


Meet Cute

by Pixie (magnetgirl)



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M, Trek Rarepair Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 02:28:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11393487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/pseuds/Pixie
Summary: Garak sees Morn through different eyes.





	Meet Cute

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lion_owl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lion_owl/gifts).



> I've never written either of these men before, or imagined the pairing, so thanks for dragging me out of my comfort zone (it's why I love exchanges). I apologize for the brevity, but at the end of the day it worked best short and simple. I hope you agree.

Morn never stops talking. Garak never says anything. Two statements repeated time and again, by anyone, and everyone, on the station that constitutes their community. Both comments are true, using some definition of truth. Neither is accurate.

Morn is gregarious. But so is Garak. Garak is tight-lipped. But so is Morn. Two sides of the same coin. Back to back and of an uncertain worth. Used by certain cults to greed and profit, judged by other cultures allegedly enlightened but actually elitist. They are nothing alike, and yet similar enough young Molly O’Brien once mistook one for the other. Only for a moment, but long enough for Garak to look at Morn in a way he’d never considered prior to her error.

Perhaps the Lurian is neither the barfly he appears to be, nor the scoundrel he claims to be. Perhaps Morn is a kindred spirit. A lost soul. Like him. If anyone can be. 

Garak knows everyone. It is his job, his purpose, to know. Very few people know Garak. Possibly no one. Possibly he doesn’t even know himself. Possibly there is no real, true, separate, Garak to know.

It’s a terrible thought, and it keeps him up at night.

Or it did, before Morn.

A week after little Molly ever so briefly mixed them up, Garak -- the picture of nonchalance -- approached Morn at his all but assigned spot on the bar and struck up a conversation about Quark’s always disturbingly titled and overpriced ‘specials’. It took very little well placed small talk to start Morn pontificating on his own, of course, but this time Garak listened not as a collector of information, but as someone potentially interested in what was being said. 

It was oddly pleasant. If pleasantly odd.

After that tentative step toward normalcy, it became a custom. Garak and Morn are both creatures of habit and it was -- oddly, pleasantly -- easy to slip into a friendly routine. A comfort. 

They had no expectations. That’s why it works. Julian, Ziyal, Starfleet, Cardassia, all of them had expectations. For Garak to be a puzzle, a prize, a person. Morn expects nothing from him, nothing of him. Not even expectation. 

Garak can relax. 

They had no expectations and are thus as surprised as anyone, and everyone, on the station that constitutes their community, when they -- well, Molly says they fell in love. And she’s pretty smart.


End file.
